CGT to Mobilize In Late June

Postponing the thorny question of Bernard Thibault’s successor, the CGT intends to put itself in battle order in order to deploy for a week before the social conference.

The confederal executive commission of the CGT is going to face up to its responsibilities. On June 12 it postponed to its next meeting, on June 19, “the continuation of the process of preparing for the 50th congress and, notably, the method and calendar for choosing the next general secretary.” For the leaders of the trade union confederation, priority must be given to preparing for the social conference of July 9-10. The CGT intends to take the “necessary demand initiatives to permit the expression of the employees’ point of view.” Thus the executive commission has called on the member organizations of the CGT to “deploy massively in the last week of June to popularize the CGT’s proposals, which will be distributed to the employees in the form of 1.2 million copies of a four-page leaflet.”

Bernard Thibault insisted in his introductory report, published on the afternoon of June 13 by AFP, that for his part, the designation of his successor should not be “an urgent priority.” In order to break a vicious circle which is “harmful to the unity of the CGT,” it is necessary to “deal differently” with the thorny question: “New paths need to be explored according to mechanisms which remain to be defined, but this should not be an urgent priority,” Thibault, the general secretary of the CGT, said, proposing that the discussion within the National Confederal Committee (CCN) be used as the starting point. The CCN discussion “underlines the need to work on basic questions before choosing the future leaders.”

“In other words, the destructive competition among declared or available candidates has to stop. This competition only deepens divisions among member organizations, activists and leaders,” Bernard Thibault argued. “This is all the more necessary as no candidate is likely, in the present situation, to obtain the broadest possible consensus from the CCN and reinforce the unity of the CGT. The bulk of our work must first concentrate on the political questions that must structure our objectives, in accordance with our analysis of the situation and the stakes, and that must set out our trade union mode of action and our forms of organization.”